'The Last Showgirl' is a tearful toast to the end of an era
Roadside
No one cares the way you care; no one experiences it the way you experience it. Detractors might call “The Last Showgirl” a familiar attempt to give Pamela Anderson her shot at a role like “The Wrestler,” or to bring the narrative about an aging star into a world where that word, age, is anything but an asset.
Really, though, this affecting 81-minute effort is about the lights dimming on a creative life, pitting internal satisfaction against external validation and then, when the room has nearly emptied, asking, “How did I think I was going to feel?” And, of course, “Now what?”
For nearly four decades, Shelley (Anderson) has given everything to Le Razzle Dazzle, a Vegas show now cast aside in favor of more sexualized efforts with names like Hedonist Paradise. It’s why she has a strained relationship with her daughter Hannah (Billie Lourd), and why the performance’s press photos still feature its star of the late ‘80s, smiling agelessly in still, dancing with the same passion on stage even as crowds move along and younger performers (Kiernan Shipka, Brenda Song) fail to feel the same connection to the material. (Shelley referencing the show’s roots in Paris, alas, doesn’t sway them.) So when longtime producer Eddie (Dave Bautista) announces that show will be closing in two weeks, it’s not just a curtain call on a Vegas staple but an involuntary mirror to the choices of a woman who insists to Hannah that passion is essential in work yet is finally forced to question what’s left after all this time and sweat and absence.
Directed by Gia Coppola (“Palo Alto”), “The Last Showgirl” obviously doesn’t work without a fantastic performance by Anderson. She brings history into every scene, holding onto present moments despite an extremely fragile relationship to those past and ahead. There is real closeness between Shelley and Annette (Jamie Lee Curtis), a cocktail waitress who says she has no interest in retiring even as she and the other veteran server are always the first ones cut for the night. There is also a distance between what drives them and how the world responds, exacerbating the loneliness of a life in performance and reckoning with the possibility that it doesn’t matter how much you enjoy the show if no one’s watching.
Despite being kinda like a non-gross take on “The Substance” with more substance, this is a drama that still won’t blow anyone’s mind with its insights. Yet its grasp on the challenge of blending meaning and sustainability, of the reasons driving sacrifice and compromise, or the feeling of the mind, heart and universe in conflict with each other, all linger plenty.
B+
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